John Mayall

The blues fitted in with the early 60s, the social way of life at the time.

I managed to pick out some pretty special people.

When I write songs that touch on social relevance, all you have to do is pick up a newspaper.

I do the best I can with any instrument I get attracted to. But they’re just tools in order for you to express yourself and that’s really the upshot of it.

If you have something in your life worth celebrating, you can put it in a blues song.

I write songs about real things… The subject dictates the mood and it goes from there, really.

It became a kind of a game, to remember the things that had happened five minutes ago. I would start making notes about the things I was doing, on an instrument that was foreign to me, the guitar, so it was just a fun way of doing cognitive therapy. I was none the wiser to it until I began to improve and my ability to speak began to come back.

Jazz is a beautiful woman whose older brother is a policeman.

For me, the main thing is spontaneity and taking chances.

Apparently Jazz is now considered high art and the average person has trouble understanding it.

You want the listener to find the song on their own, give too much away and it takes away from the imagination.

I don’t really live like a musician myself. I think music is just something that I do, but I’d like to be doing lots of other things. I like to cure all kinds of illness.

Last time I saw Count Basie, he was in a wheelchair. They wheeled him up onto the stage, he sits down at the piano, and he gives the downbeat, and that band played like they were in heaven. And right in the middle, the band cuts. He had to take one hand and put the other on it, and he comes down with one note. And it was the greatest note I ever heard in my life.

I’ve been a jazz artist playing pop and R&B my entire career.

Let the music speak for itself.

Don’t say Aretha is making a comeback, because I’ve never been away!

As long as I can say what it is that I need to say, then I’ll fit whatever I’m trying to say around a melody.

The more you play, the more you hear and the more you hear, the more you want to play.

Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.

When you hear my lyrics, you hear the shots that I throw at people. I throw shots because I always been the underdog. I got rejected so many times, and I say it in my lyrics constantly.

I have to be a star like another man has to breathe.